Currently there is no transparent way for applications in mobile phones to upload and download files which phone users consider important to share. Either sharing files is not possible at all or the sharing is very user consuming, because the phone user has to personally oversee the transfer. The user has to make sure the files are moved to the appropriate directory and subsequently a particular application uses or edits a configuration of the application to enable usage of these new files, i.e., FTP (File Transfer Protocol) or similar means have to be used. To enable easy transfer of files with as little actions from the user as possible, there should be some kind of file sharing engine. For a better user experience the user should see the transferred file as an object for the particular application, e.g., the user can be informed that there is a new circuit, “Suzuka” for a game “Formula 1 2003” available, and not just told that a track_suzuka_ver11.tra file was downloaded in a “download” directory.
Prior art solutions are file transfer solutions where the user has to know what the files are, what they contain, what directory they should be in and how to configure the applications to use them. These previous solutions are implementations of different file transfer protocols. In all these applications little or no middleware application logic is used.